Joomla Extensions You Need

While Joomla is a great system on it's own, the real secret to it's power is the ease of extending it. Using the extensions listed below (all of these extensions are free) you take take your Joomla-powered website to the next level.

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If you want to improve not only the search engine rankings of your Joomla site, but the security as well, then you need to be using sh404SEF.

sh404SEF helps improve your search rankings by generating keyword-rich URLs on your site, along with full control over title and meta tags on each page. Instead of needing to manually write the meta data for each page, sh404SEF provides a tool that will automatically go to each page and go it for you. Even with a medium-sized site this can sve you hours of work.

To help improve security on your site sh404SEF provides automated filtering against the most common attacks that plague Joomla sites including: cross-site scripting (XSS), malicious page requests, flooding attacks, contact page spamming and site access from suspicious IPs. These tools cover around 99% of all automated hacking attempts that might target your site.

As an added bonus it will even help improve the user-experience on your site. You can setup custom error pages very easily and give your users a better idea of why the error happened and how to get where they want to be. If you want you can include a small icon next to links to external pages so your users will know when they are going to a different site, similar to what you see on wikipedia.org. It can even remove all of the tables from the default Joomla code and replace it with tableless HTML.

Even if you don't want to take advantage of the search engine friendly URLs you really should be using sh404SEF on your site.

SOBI2 is billed as a directory component where users can manage their own listing, and you can even charge for access to some of the features. But with it's powrful plugin system you can go so much farther than a standard directory. Each listing can have it's own gallery or downloads, you can have Google maps and so much more.

If you want to have any kind of listings on your site, you need to be using SOBI2. The component and most of the plugins are free, and it can make you lots of money. Some of the plugins you will need to pay for, but you may not need that functionality.

While it is based on TinyMCE just like the editor that comes installed with Joomla, JCE has added in many more features and is a lot more usable. There are a few plugins available for it, though the more advanced ones you need to pay for.

There isn't much that Community Builder (CB) can't do. It is built to be the central engine for running a community-based site, but goes so much farther. It has a plugin system that is arguably better than the one built in to Joomla and almost every major component that's been released has a plugin to make it work with CB.

Every user can have their own galleries, their own blog, almost anything you can think of, all linked to their main profile. It's one of the finest examples of open source development you'll find.

If you want to run a store on your Joomla site, VirtueMart is for you. If has all of the features you'd expect from a shopping cart system and plugs directly in to Joomla. This means you don't need to run something separate like osCommerce and your users are then signed up in Joomla and can take advantage of those features.

DocMAN is a file management extension with a lot of great features. If you're just looking for a basic system where users can download files from your site, it does that. If you want to be more complex and have certain files only available to certain users or groups of users, it does that. If you want to use it to have certain links only available to certain users or groups, it does that. It also gives you leech protection and hides the real paths to files on your site, so people can't direct link to them.

With JForms you can create and manage forms on your site, all with drag-and-drop ease. You can include any type of form element you can think of, even two types of CAPTCHA to prevent spam submissions. You can seutp validation rules for any of the fields, and define where the responses are sent.

If you don't need all of the features that come with Virtuemart and just need a quick way to sell products, this is far and away the best option for you. It's easy to install and configure, and has great usability for your site visitors. It only supports PayPal and Google Checkout for payments, however.

Have you ever struggled to backup or move your Joomla site? Akeeba makes this an extremely easy process. Most hosts have backups in place, but you should always have your own backups of your sites, and with Akeeba's one-click process, there's no excuse not to.

If you found this hub to be helpful make sure to rate it. Also, please leave comments if you think I missed your favorite extension, or leave your thoughts on one that is listed.